


Through all the long night / winter moon glows with bright love / sleet her silver tears

by GlitchHologram



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Ba Sing Se, Character Study, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Love Triangles, Other, Polyamory, Stream of Consciousness, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29060820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitchHologram/pseuds/GlitchHologram
Summary: Grief, Loss, and Love. To love again after love has been lost requires a delicate touch for a sorrowful heart...How do you mourn, when your girlfriend turns into the moon?Sokka x Yue** Suki’s eyes fluttered shut. Her lips - shiny, as ripe and bright as a thicket of bearberries - pursed as she leaned in for a kiss.Sokka could hardly breathe for the sight of it. “Wait,” Sokka objected “I can’t”.**
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Through all the long night / winter moon glows with bright love / sleet her silver tears

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this several months back, around June 2020 and felt too shy to post it. 
> 
> A musing on Sokka & Grief, and the difficulty in accepting joy and love after having had, and had lost.   
> The intro is very Sokka x Suki, but then the rest is "my girlfriend turned into the moon" angst played straight.   
> Reads well as a oneshot; may make it an unconventional romance / poly thing with Suki / Sokka / the Moon if well received. 
> 
> Thanks for checking out my work!

Through all the long night / winter moon glows with bright love / sleet her silver tears. 

How do you mourn, when your girlfriend turns into the moon? 

Suki’s eyes fluttered shut. Her lips - shiny, as ripe and bright as a thicket of bearberries - pursed as she leaned in for a kiss. 

Sokka could hardly breathe for the sight of it. Tui and La, what a woman!   
Tui… And La. “Wait,” Sokka objected - far too curtly. “I can’t” 

“Oh…” She was so beautiful, her face glowing in the moonlight. The silver light of the moon cast over her, the light shining in her eyes so beautifully… That’s the problem, isn’t it?   
Constricting pain, borne of guilt, squeezed Sokka’s chest. Smothering his breath, stuttering his heart.   
It felt wrong, like this. Disrespectful. 

It’s hard to properly mourn someone who isn’t dead. And yet so damn easy, in other ways. 

Every night, he sees her beautiful face shining down on him. It hurts. To see her so close. But she doesn’t giggle and blush, pressing into his side warmly when he jokes. They can’t hold hands, kiss in the moonlight, the rhythmic lapping of the waves pulling them hypnotically together.   
He stays up late, when the moon is full. Basking in her beautiful glow. Observing the vigor brought to the ocean swell. Oh! How beautiful the world is, luminated with her presence.   
If only he could forgo sleep entirely, those nights. To share each others company just a little longer. 

Every month he is reminded of That Night. It is excruciating to bear. He can’t sleep those nights, either.   
Sure, he turns in early. Earlier than anyone else he’ll slip into his sleeping skin. He curls up tight on his side, pulls his head into his hands, closes his eyes and breathes. Slow breaths. In and out and in and out. Until the world around him fades away and he’s left with nothing but his thoughts.   
But he doesn’t sleep. 

He only cries when the Moon is new.   
It’s just not attractive! He can’t look bad in front of his girl like that! What would Yue think; seeing him with sticky snot and tears dripping down his face? That’s as unmanly as it gets! 

He can’t even think of the other reasons, not even to himself. His mind skitters away when he recalls That Night-   
Zhao’s face, contorted in rage  
Searing heat  
La’s light bleeding from the sky  
Yue. Oh! Blessed Yue. 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

But she did. She knew it; knew it was La’s celestial light that allowed them to walk amongst the stars. Her gentle hand which guided her partner Tui and the creatures that swim within his domain and the ships he cradles in his arms. It is by her blinking rhythm in the sky that their people tracked the passage of the seasons.   
Yui didn’t flinch from duty. 

He wants to curse her for it, sometimes. Curse her for choosing everyone and everything instead of choosing happiness and humanity and himself.   
But he can’t. 

Of course not. 

Especially now that he knows- 

… 

We need the moon. It’s part of the cycle, the balance, the ebb and flow of time. 

We need the moon, now more than ever. 

Sozin’s comet is coming, soon. Fire and death will come with it. Another massacre. A genocide - the likes of which haven’t been seen for a hundred years.   
It was hard to think about, sometimes. There’s nothing Wrong with the Southern Water Tribe. Only, there is. He didn’t see it, growing up. Maybe a little, in the voices of the elders, in his father’s furrowed brows.   
In Mom, the hollow she left behind.   
He didn’t see it until he followed Katara on this foxhairbrained adventure, flying across the world and back on the saddle of the Avatar’s bison. Saw the poverty he’d grown in with fresh eyes. Saw how his tribe was hanging on with white-knuckled fingers to escape the fate the Airbenders had fallen to. 

… 

The Eclipse was their last chance.   
Yue was their last chance.   
Yue. La. Stepping in the path of her brother, Agni, and staying his hand. 

Without Yue and her sacrifice they’d all be dead before the albatross-hares had molted their feathers from nutty brown to snow-hued down. 

What a woman! A goddess!   
He couldn't help but chuckle. If anyone deserved godhood. Anyone, anyone. It was Yue. Kindhearted, noble, brilliant Yue.   
His chuckle went rotten in his throat. His eyes burned. He held his breath, four heartbeats. Then breathed in deep, breathed out slow. 

She wouldn’t want to see him like this. 

She’d want him to be happy. To live on. To love again. 

And he is! He will. 

But it just feels wrong to kiss another for the first time under her heavy gaze.   
It’s hard enough, seeing Yue night after night and yet never holding her in his arms. He still loves her so dearly. And he knows she still loves him, watches over him from her place above.   
He’ll never forget her. 

Sokka scrubs his eyes against his arm. Not crying! Nope! No crying here! 

All he can do. All he can do to honor her. Is to live this frail mortal life, the life she sacrificed.   
Grow up. Fall in love. Smell the jasmine blossoms when you stroll past their shrubs. Maybe have a gaggle of kids. Hold on tight to the ones you love, hug them and kiss them and say “I love you”. Grow old and wise until hair is coming out your ears, because there’s no more room - it’s all full of Old Man Wisdom.   
Yue can’t do that, anymore.   
That’s okay. 

He’s okay. 

He’s okay. 

It’s going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N:   
> Giving Atla a rewatch now that it’s on Netflix. Got to Sokka’s bit in the poetry class of s02e014, Tales of Ba Sing Se. My first thought was “Sokka, you flirt! Making lovey-dovey eyes at this class of girls! What about Suki? What about Yue??! 
> 
> And then I paused, and actually read the poem that had Sokka getting all sappy and sighing, “Ahh, poetry!” … AND IT WAS A LOVE POEM ABOUT THE MOON.   
> I’M SORRY I DOUBTED YOU, SOKKA!!   
> (This is also the title inspo, fyi)
> 
> I’m pretty new to creative writing & am still finding my voice. Right now, I’m reminding myself of William Faulkner, very As I Lay Dying. Very heady and in the moment.   
> I’d like to write more structured fiction, but this is pleasant to ease my way in with :) 
> 
> Please leave a review! Thank you for reading!


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